Followers

Recent Events on Luis Arocho's 2000's History Timeline

Almost one year after Microsoft unveiled the 360 Nintendo jump right back into the console wars with the unleashing of the NINTENDO Wii. Though the Wii isn't capable of HD video gaming graphics, this was something that was talked about by Nintendo and done as a strategy. Nintendo figured that only a small amount of homes in the world had HD televisions and that it wouldn't be the best idea to pander to a small amount of the gaming world. This was important because Nintendo was right, in 2006 I personally owned a XBOX 360 but not a HD television, this is a year after I bought the 360. References: Nintendo of America Inc. (2010). Nintnedo.com. Retrieved February 28, 2010. from http://www.nintendo.com/

I think we all know when Sony's Playstation does something, they do it big. This is no different with the PS3. The PS3 held a IBM designed Cell microprocessor for its CPU, with the NVIDIA RSX 'Reality Synthesizer' as its graphics processor. I will tell you though when I talk to my friends the man reason they bought the PS3 was for its Blu-Ray. This is a HD dvd player unlike any before it, with more memory and better visual abilities movies can now be seen like never before. The 360 had a external HD drive for watching HD dvd's but it was a different from having internal play capabilities. This was important because people didn't want to buy a adaptor just to watch hi definition movies, people want to buy a home entertainment systems needs no extra purchases to do everything that it claims it can do. References : Sony Entertainment America Inc. (2010). Playstation. Retrieved February 28, 2010. from http://us.playstation.com/index.htm

When Microsoft released the 360 on November 22, 2005 many people were very ready to receive it. The 360 sold out on its release date all regions, excluding the japanese market. The 360 would run on IBM's Xenon processor and ATI would produces the graphic processing unit for the new XBOX. Though in the future the 360 would have some problem like the dreaded "red ring of death", this hardware failure would shutdown the 360 making it unable to work anymore. Microsoft would eventually would fix this with there multiple modifications. The release of the XBOX 360 was a huge leap for the gaming industry. Along with XBOX Live and the leap of technology of the 360 Microsoft was poised to take over the gaming industry.

Sony knew that if they wanted to be considered just as big a Nintendo in the market place they needed their own portable gaming system to compete with Nintendo's DS. That is where the PSP comes into play. Sony brought out, a as Sony always does a more powerful piece of equipment. This hardware aloud for the best graphics in a portable gaming device, better than the friends at Nintendo would have wanted. This device was a big deal to the gaming industry. With the entrance of the PSP, in my opinion no longer had to settle for the childish games Nintendo has become know to have. You could now get that gore factor that so many player hunger for, along with the much longed for and love Grand Theft Auto games, which made it debut on October 25, 2005.

The NINTENDO DS was Nintendo first mobile game unit that featured 2 LCD screens, with the bottom screen being a touchscreen. It came with a built-in micro phone and WiFI capabilities with a range of 10 -30 meters.

Owned by Microsoft Game Studios and developed by Bungie, Ensemble Studios, Robot Entertainment, and 343 Industries, Halo: Combat Evolved has become the "killer app" for the XBOX and XBOX 360 consoles. This game changed first-person shooter in a way like none before it. Most first-person shooters were played in very confined environments with little to no outside gaming play. Halo brought forth huge battle ground environments and many added foe to fill these areas. Halo also limited the amounts of weapons you could hold to give a more real feeling of being Master Chief the games main character. Many First-person shooters would allow for as many weapons to hold as you wanted or could acquire. Bungie while making Halo wanted the player to understand as a real Marine you could only hold so many weapons in real life and this needed to be felt by the players. Let's not forget vehicles and the game fellow AI Marine fighting at your side. No games to my knowledge used vehicles the way Bungie did. Halo's actual life qualities and amazing environments gave new values to first-person shooters.

Microsoft is know for its operating systems not is video gaming, well that was until the XBOX was introduced on November 15, 2001. This was Microsoft's first time entering into the video game industry and what an entrance it was. During the Game Developers Conference in 2000, audiences were dazzled by the console's technology. People say that it isn't the hardware that make the platforms its the games, with that being said I don't think anyone was ready for one game in-particular named "Halo: Combat Evolved." Halo was unlike any of its predecessors, this first-person shooter changed FPS' in many ways, though I'll leave that for my next event! XBOX entering the industry changed it just by being around and creating one great game and a hell of a lot of buzz! Now Sony and Nintendo would have to find newer ways of making games just to keep people from leaving them and running out to buy the XBOX.

On November 5, 2001 the NINTENDO GAMECUBE made its debut in North America. With this release from NINTENDO they can now challenge Sony and there Playstation 2, witch has been a huge success since its release. How ever Nintendo plans to throw some big name games at the public to start the party off right. "Key NINTENDO GAMECUBE titles unveiled by Nintendo at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) include Luigi's Mansion, featuring Mario's younger brother chasing ghosts in a mysterious haunted house; Super Smash Bros. Melee, a frantic fun-fest featuring all-time favorite Nintendo characters in stunning detail; and Pikmin, a life simulation action-strategy game from Mr. Miyamoto", along with , "Donkey Kong Racing, Eternal Darkness, Kameo: Elements of Power, The Legend of Zelda, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime, NBA Courtside 2002, Raven Blade, Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet and Wave Race Blue Storm." This was a big deal for Nintendo to get back into the industry with a new platform and fast so they weren't perceived as being behind the Playstation 2. This was a big deal for the industry as platform competition has always pushed for the best games in the industry. Nintendo has always been a big player in the gaming industry and with out them things might start to get a little stale! References: Digital Media FX. (2008). Digital Media FX dFX. Retrieved on February 26, 2010. from http://www.digitalmediafx.com/E3/gamecuberelease.html

It was either a good news day or bad news day depending on the perspective you had at the time. SEGA released the news that they were going to be discontinuing the the Dreamcast. There was a press conference held two company executives one named Charles Bellfield and the other being Peter Moore. Basically the announcement was to let the public know SEGA was going to become a third-party game make to multiple platforms. This is huge news to the gaming industry, one of the most successful in the gaming industry and big boys on the block though out the 90's was going away. Although SEGA stayed in the software development part, SEGA platforms are now a thing of the past. With Sega out of the platform wars and Nintendo being the only other left, there was room for Sony's Playstation 2 to dominate! That was unless someone else was making a move to fill SEGA's Shoes! References: Kent, S. (2001). The Ultimate History of Video Games: from Pong to Pokemon and beyond... New York: Three Rivers Press.

Sony released the Playstation 2 on October 26, 2000. If Sony wanted to hold on to the gaming edge it had with the original playstation they first need something to compete with the new and very powerful SEGA Dreamcast. So that's what Sony did, they put to together the most powerful platform ever released. By comparison, the Playstation 2 has a 128-bit, 294 MHz main processor, with 32 megs of system RAM and 4 megs of video RAM. This combo is capable of generating 16 million polygons per second. It plays DVD discs and games on proprietarily formatted discs. The Playstation 2 is expandable through memory card, USB, and PC card ports, and a bay for a hard drive." Although the new Sony Playstation 2 was running around $300 and if you couldn't get one witch was most likely the case at the time of its release and much after, then you could get one through auction at $600. With that being said the playstation 2 was said to have this best graphics of a counsel at it time of release, not to mention the third-party game developers they had waiting to make games for the playstation 2. This is what separated them from SEGA who's major down fall if you ask me was that SEGA was making most of the games by themselves. References: Carton Donofrio Interactive. (2000). Start Your Own Radio Station. Retrieved February 26, 2010. from http://www.streettech.com/archives_gadget/DCvsPS2.html